- In terms of subscribers, Reliance Jio continues at the top spot as the largest telecom service, adding more than 62 lakh new users, Airtel also added 9 lakh subscribers while Vodafone lost 35 lakh.
In terms of subscribers, Reliance Jio continues at the top spot as the largest telecom service, adding more than 62 lakh, new users, in February, followed by Bharti Airtel adding 9 lakh.
Reliance Jio had over 38.28 crore subscribers at the end of February and Bharti Airtel had a customer base of over 32.90 crores, the data released by India’s Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) revealed.
State-run BSNL has also added over 4.39 crore subscribers to nearly 11.99 crores taking their total tally.
On the other hand, the depletion of the user base of Vodafone persisted, as it lost 34.67 lakh subscribers taking its total base down to 32.55 crores.
“The total number of wireless subscribers (2 G, 3 G & 4 G) increased from 1.156.44 million (115.64 crores) at the end of January 20 to 1.160.59 million (116.05 crores) at the end of Feb-20, recording a monthly increase of 0.36 percent,” the TRAI statement stated.
However, wireless subscriptions in urban areas decreased from 64.45 crores at the end of January to 64.32 crores at the end of February and wireless subscription in rural areas increased from 51.19 crores at the end of January to 51.73 crores at the end of February.
Monthly growth rates of urban and rural wireless subscriptions were 0.20 percent and 1.06 percent respectively, it said.
Jio has grown immensely since its inception. In July 2017, Reliance unveiled the first paid plan for Jio at its 40th AGM in Mumbai, where the company is headquartered, after more than three quarters of providing free 4 G data. Until then, Jio had reached 108 million users, 72 million of whom were paying subscribers, drawing on the annual membership of Jio Prime for Rs 99. This also had become the fastest-growing telecommunication network in the world.
Reliance slowly raised tariffs for Jio between 2017 and 2020 but India continues to have the world’s cheapest mobile data. At present, the average cost of 1GB of data is Rs 18 ($0.26). And, Jio is the largest telco in the country, with 388 million subscribers.
Jio has moved ahead of only providing telecommunication services. Sometime in 2019, Ambani made it clear that Jio’s ambitions weren’t restricted to just telecom. It will be artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things ( IoT), blockchain, online gaming, video sharing, multi-party video conferencing, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality ( VR) and mixed reality (MR), e-commerce, shopping, safety, etc.
With Airtel gaining some ground in the battle between Vodafone, Jio & Airtel, this battle is spicing day by day and it will interesting to see how much more competition does these two brands give to Jio.
